I was actually quite surprised at how quick and easy Keynote is as a prototyping tool. It will also run natively on on iPad using the mobile Keynote version. This was good to test on and got the point across well. With the simple transitions in between screens it felt like a real app – and yet confusing when something didn’t work – because it looked like it should work. My feeling is that prototypes should possibly just look like prototypes and not a finished product – it did confuse users. Or maybe I didn’t put enough into the prototype. Where do you draw the line on a prototype?

I was rough testing paper sketches very early on to check the drag & drop interface and the loading / recording of songs. Users tried “to imagine” gestural interactions on these static, paper prototypes – this seemed difficult, but easier on the clickable iPad prototype.

Two friends of mine who also create music got the entire idea immediately – two other friends battled somewhat with grasping the concept, but did get it in the end. So, it would appear that the design requires some existing knowledge of audio creation – which I was trying to avoid. Or possibly just a small learning curve – the design would produce instant results and encourage experimentation – which I believe would aid in the learnability of the product.